Altice USA’s fiber-to-the-home project won’t only allow the cable operator to provide new services, it will be a key component in the company’s goal to move to a full self-install model, chairman and CEO Dexter Goei told an industry audience Tuesday.
Altice USA began its FTTH buildout – dubbed Generation Gigaspeed – about a year ago with the express goal of completing it in five years. The company has so far passed about 500,000 homes with fiber.
At the J.P. Morgan Global Technology Media & Communications conference in Boston, Goei said once fiber is deployed to the home it is connected directly to CPE units – not the inside wiring – and from there video and data is distributed throughout the house. He added that coupled with its Altice One hub – which should be fiber enabled by the first half of next year – the need for in-home technician visits declines dramatically.
“Ultimately, the idea is for us to go full self-install,” Goei said. “You should be able to connect your headless gateway at your drop, push a button, WiFi gets transmitted, you're just plugging in your mini-box into your TV and into the wall for power, and should be able to self-provision everything. Every incidence going forward, should be able to be dealt with remotely. Unless there is a fault in the box itself, where we have to replace the box, nothing should require a customer technician coming into your home anymore. …Self-install is already a big part of our business in Europe today. We should be able to get self-install and self-provisioning here in the U.S.”
